A GARDENER killed his lover in a “fit of passion” after she refused to commit to a relationship with him, a court has been told.

Jurors at the Old Bailey heard on Tuesday that Peter Ling, 50, and 55-year-old Linda Casey, who were both married, had been seeing each other for two years after meeting at a horticultural college class.

Mrs Casey had become estranged from her second husband and was seeing another man along with Mr Ling, who is accused of beating her to death with a piece of flint and leaving her to die in Banstead Woods on August 8 last year.

The court heard from Ann Shaw, who was a student with Mr Ling at Sutton College of Learning for Adults, in a class taught by Mrs Casey.

Mrs Shaw said she visited Mr Ling in Highdown Prison the day after the victim’s funeral in September.

“We had been friends and colleagues, he had been in my house, and I just needed to look him in the face,” she said.

“He looked quite terrified to see me because he didn’t really know what was going to happen or in what frame of mind I had gone to visit him.

"He said ‘I don’t know whether you are here to hug me or hit me’.”

Mrs Shaw said the defendant told her he had repeatedly tried to get Mrs Casey to commit to a relationship, and that he told his wife, Deborah, that he had met someone else on the Friday before the attack.

The pair met at the Rambler’s Rest pub in Chipstead at midday on Saturday, August 8, the court heard, and they walked up to a dense wooded area where Mr Ling confronted Mrs Casey about the other man she was seeing, Ian Tolfrey.

“I remember him saying that she was very non-committal, that she just kept repeating ‘Oh Peter, oh Peter’, but she wasn’t particularly forthcoming in response to what he was saying,” Mrs Shaw said.

“They ended up having a physical fight, and the thing that made him snap was that she was trying to get away from him.

She told the jury: “He stopped her leaving, he was sitting on her chest and he picked up a piece of flint and repeatedly struck her in the face.”

The court heard that Mr Ling shed his bloodstained clothes and moved Mrs Casey’s car from the view of the road in an attempt to cover his tracks.

“He said all he could think of was just to cover things up,” Mrs Shaw added.

“He went back to the car, found her mobile and found explicit photographs on it which he took to be of Ian or to do with Ian.

“He said he closed down and he stopped caring about the effect on Linda’s family. That was why he didn’t hand himself in.

“I said to him if I had killed somebody I loved in a fit of passion I couldn’t live with it and I would have handed myself in.

“He said the photos on that phone were the final straw and he went home and pretended everything was normal for three days.

“As I was walking away he was saying ‘Maybe if Linda had done things differently, if she had said something earlier’.

“I said 'It’s not what she did or didn’t do, it’s what you did do that has got us to this point'. He indicated that he understood.”